Curious about what you did mentally to come up with the answer!
And whether you were even able to do it completely in your head with eyes shut.
How would you do this mental challenge? Close your eyes, and without moving any part of your body, figure out the 17th letter of the alphabet.
r/AskMen
Comments
Is it Q?
I closed my eyes and sang the alphabet song in my head, while visualizing the letters pop up one at a time. And organizing them into groups of 5. I knew the 17th letter would be second one in the fourth group. Fun challenge!
Q, just count letter-number-letter-number
Q, heard the alphabet song in my mind and a background voice was saying a number to go with each letter, I knew I was at 16 by the end of elemenopee
Q, mentally said J is 10th letter, klm, nop (so head counted two groups of 3, so I knew the next was 17th.
I basically counted on my fingers in my head lol 😂
Pictured both of my hands in front of me making a fist, and mentally sang the alphabet song while imagining extending 1 finger at a time. I ended up at Q.
A-1, B-2, C-3 etc, Q is the 17th.
I visualized an old phone keyboard and counted in groups of 3 and found out it’s Q
Q. There’s 26 letters so 13-14 is the middle and that’s M-N. Q is three letters on from N.
I counted in step 5
A,B,C,D,E
Fastly then
F, G, H, I, J
Then again fastly
K, L, M, N, O
Then slowly
P, Q and I got it
Some letters I know by order in the alphabet. ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ are easy as 1-2-3, which makes ‘D’ as fourth easy. ‘Z’ is of course last of 26, which makes easy to place ‘Y’ and ‘X’ at 25 and 24. My name starts with a ‘J’, and knew as a child that ‘J’ was 10th.
tl;dr – ‘M’ is the 13th, the middle letter (though I suppose one can argue ‘N’ as co-middle letter) of the alphabet, and said with the little voice inside my head the next four letters to land on ‘Q’.
Simple. I know the letters in my name, one is O, so 15+2 o-p-q
Started with M, being the 13th letter, and counted from there to Q.
It’s L in Lithuanian alphabet.
I just visualize rubik’s cube and count in sets of four. It’s related to how you solve one blindfolded.
Yeah I got Q, lined up the letters in my head while internally singing the song, added a number above each letter as I got to it.
So it looked like:
1 2 3 4 5
a b c d e
And so on
The number would kind of pop into existence above the letter after singing the letter in my head and taking note of its position
I envisioned a row of 5 empty boxes in my head and put A-E in them, then added another row of 5 empty boxes boelow those and put F-J in them, did it again with K-O, then added another row and put the first two letters in, the second of which was Q.
I imagined the letters hovering over imaginary hands. Lost my place the first time, then had to concentrate harder the second time. I have terrible working memory.
I “highlighted in my brain” each finger while I sang the alphabet, to the point where I could allllmost feel a sort of tingling in my fingers
I mentioned sets of 5 letters until 15, then 2 more:
ABCDE…FGHIJ…KLMNO…PQ – it’s Q
My first name starts with P, the 16th letter, and my birthday is also the 16th. I noticed that fact when I was a kid. So I just counted one up from that. It’s Q.
Recite letters in batches of 5, they are easy enough to count and remember. Then after 3 lots, do 2. To q.
I’d also add, if it was something less known to me than the alphabet, I would have probably just imagined the number counting as I cycled through whatever it was, I know a small number of people can’t visualise things but I can and it’s useful for imagining a counter, I can see the number and tick it over to the next number.
People here are imagining groups of 5 but I did groups of 4. I pictured 1 past the 4×4 grid to get to 17.
A1, B2, C3…etc. This was fast and no problem.
When I count in my head I think In 5s like on a die. So every time I get to 5 add another die and picture them side by side. So i would just go through the alphabet adding dots on the dice until I had three full (15) then count 2 more letters